Word.ws English Dictionary

businessness

businessness noun: the quality of being businesslike or characteristic of a business. Also the misspelling of businesses.

Noun

businessness (uncountable)

  1. (nonstandard) The quality of being businesslike or characteristic of a business.
    • The t ratio and factor analysis were used to isolate the common underlying "teacherness" and "businessness" within groups.1971, Daniel Cohen, “Differentiating Motivations Underlying Vocational Choice”, in The Journal of Educational Research, volume 64, number 5, Taylor & Francis, →DOI, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 229
    • Everything is built on relationships. To paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut, "It is the humanness that makes a business great, not the 'businessness.'"2004, Mark Sanborn, The Fred Factor: How Passion In Your Work and Life Can Turn the Ordinary into the Extraordinary, New York, N.Y.; […]: Currency/Doubleday, →ISBN, unnumbered page

Also used as

businessness is also the misspelling of businesses.

Examples of businessness in a sentence

  • "If you always stay at a company, this barbaric businessness overtakes you," he says.2005 March 14, Chris Taylor, quoting David Taylor, “School of Bright Ideas”, in Time, volume 165, number 11, New York, N.Y.: Time Inc....
  • So the stank, the swagger about her businessness of her aesthetic, her style.2021 February 4, Wesley Morris, Jenna Wortham, “Best of the Archives: Aretha Franklin”, in Still Processing (podcast), spoken by Jenna...

Origin of businessness

From business + -ness.

Questions about businessness

What does businessness mean?
Businessness means the quality of being businesslike or characteristic of a business.
How do you use businessness in a sentence?
"If you always stay at a company, this barbaric businessness overtakes you," he says.
What part of speech is businessness?
Businessness is a noun.

Words near businessness in the dictionary

  1. businessman's special
  2. businessman's trip
  3. businessmanlike
  4. businessmen
  5. businessmen's risks
  6. businessness
  7. businessowner
  8. businessowners
  9. businesspeople
  10. businessperson
  11. businesspersons

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: businessness (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “businessness.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/businessness. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.